Fr. Joe mentioned that the feeding of the 5000 directly precedes the gospel reading for the Feast of Corpus Christi that we celebrated last weekend. Do you believe in that miracle?
Your questions reminds me of a man who once said to me he was no longer a Christian because if Jesus could produce food for hungry people and only did it once or twice, he did not want anything to do with him. He felt Jesus should have done it many times and left the recipe for his followers. But I suspect that focusing on the physical miracle is like reading the story of Jonah and debating and researching whether a man can live in the belly of a whale for three days or not…it misses the deeper truth that the story is trying to impart.
We can imagine the scene: a blistering hot afternoon in a far off deserted and dusty plain. Jesus has just finished preaching about the dream he has for our world; about a kingdom where no one is in need, where everyone’s hunger is met, a joyful time when God’s goodness will reign, when there is no hostility, no war, a kingdom of compassion, sharing and deep communion with God and with each other. A time and place where love is the law of the land.
Minutes after he finishes, the disciples, say to Jesus, “We have to send these people away so they can find some food for themselves before nightfall or we are going to have a hungry mob on our hands.” The disciples immediately snap back into survival mode, concentrating on what they lack; panicking over a need they do not have the resources to meet. They prescribe having the people “go and buy” what they need from some outside resource before its too late.
Jesus redirects the attention of the disciples to what they DO have. He tells them they should feed the people. But they are locked into the magnitude of the need before them and the scarcity of resources. They say “But we have nothing here - nothing but 5 loaves and 2 fish…”
Theologian John Shea says that it is at THIS point that Jesus has brought about a “crucial shift” in their thinking. They have moved from the preoccupation with lack to the awareness of assets. They are no longer looking outside themselves for an answer. They have turned their gaze within. "Going and buying may work in the physical world, but what works in the spiritual world is standing still and becoming aware. Knowing what we HAVE is the first step of spiritual transformation.”
So, a possible spin on this miracle is that just maybe Jesus knew that these people were not so dim as to hike out to a deserted place for most of the day in the scorching heat without some provisions. Maybe when Jesus gave thanks and shared so generously the little he had, he inspired everyone there to slowly begin to dig into their pockets and purses to share the food they were hiding and saving for the long walk home. Maybe he managed to shift the focus of over 5000 people from seeing what they have as too little and hoarding it - to seeing it as a gift, becoming grateful and giving it away as a gift to the people around them, who in turn give it away to others.
No one 'takes and holds"; everyone 'receives and gives.' and all went home that night with a full belly. The people that day didn’t just hear the good news, but they participated in an amazing experience of divine abundance, an experience that was completely satisfying because it was a taste of the kingdom, a glimpse of the potential of people, of the collective fulfillment for which we were designed. And really, even today, what could be a greater miracle than that?
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Saturday, June 3, 2017
Crazy Catholic Question #106: Building Atrium II
What is going on in rooms Luke 1 & 2?
We aren’t building walls….rather, we tore one down! We literally tore down the wall between rooms Luke 1 & 2 in order to make more elbow room as we begin building our second Atrium, designed for our older children. A hearty and sincere thanks to our awesome maintenance staff under Derek Ikeler’s leadership who took that wall down in record time!
Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is a what’s called a “spiral” method of faith formation, meaning that the same areas of focus that we have in the First Atrium, such as Baptism, Geography, Liturgy, Kingdom Parables, etc. will also be present in the Second Atrium but just a little more advanced and complex for the children who have already mastered the lessons found in Atrium One. So, for example, on our Atrium One Geography map we only instruct the little ones on three important cities to remember: Bethlehem, Jerusalem & Nazareth but in Atrium Two that Geography lesson now includes 15 cities that we hear about in our scriptures, as well as 4 Regions, 4 Waterways & 8 Mountains. So when our older children listen to the readings at Mass and hear “This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing….” or when they read the parable of the Good Samaritan, and Jesus says “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers….”the children can actually visualize where those cities are in relation to one another and the whole region in which Jesus lived his earthly life.
Also part of the CGS method is that all our hands-on “works” (the materials that accompany each lesson) for the children are to be handmade. So, we need all you crafty folks (glue gun in hand), and/or those who can paint, sew or do some woodworking to help us out. We have several project that are needing care…
So, if you are willing to offer your time and talent to our efforts in building our new sacred space for our children, please contact me, Lisa Brown, at dre@ctredeemer.org so we can set up a meeting and I can go over all the projects to choose from. Thank you for your time and consideration! Keep us in your prayers – much has to get down before our summer program begins in July.
We aren’t building walls….rather, we tore one down! We literally tore down the wall between rooms Luke 1 & 2 in order to make more elbow room as we begin building our second Atrium, designed for our older children. A hearty and sincere thanks to our awesome maintenance staff under Derek Ikeler’s leadership who took that wall down in record time!
Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is a what’s called a “spiral” method of faith formation, meaning that the same areas of focus that we have in the First Atrium, such as Baptism, Geography, Liturgy, Kingdom Parables, etc. will also be present in the Second Atrium but just a little more advanced and complex for the children who have already mastered the lessons found in Atrium One. So, for example, on our Atrium One Geography map we only instruct the little ones on three important cities to remember: Bethlehem, Jerusalem & Nazareth but in Atrium Two that Geography lesson now includes 15 cities that we hear about in our scriptures, as well as 4 Regions, 4 Waterways & 8 Mountains. So when our older children listen to the readings at Mass and hear “This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing….” or when they read the parable of the Good Samaritan, and Jesus says “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers….”the children can actually visualize where those cities are in relation to one another and the whole region in which Jesus lived his earthly life.
Also part of the CGS method is that all our hands-on “works” (the materials that accompany each lesson) for the children are to be handmade. So, we need all you crafty folks (glue gun in hand), and/or those who can paint, sew or do some woodworking to help us out. We have several project that are needing care…
So, if you are willing to offer your time and talent to our efforts in building our new sacred space for our children, please contact me, Lisa Brown, at dre@ctredeemer.org so we can set up a meeting and I can go over all the projects to choose from. Thank you for your time and consideration! Keep us in your prayers – much has to get down before our summer program begins in July.
Crazy Catholic Question #105: Graduation
A poignant commencement speech…
Fr. Greg “G-Dog” Boyle, S.J. recently addressed the graduates of Notre Dame. Part of his talk is quoted below, but his full 11-minute speech is well worth the listen at this link: http://news.nd.edu/news/rev-gregory-j-boyle-sj-2017-laetare-address/
After his ordination in 1984, Fr. Greg was assigned to serve the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles, located between two large public housing projects with the highest concentration of gang activity in the city. In response to witnessing the devastating impact of gang violence, he led the community to launch their first social enterprise business in an abandoned bakery and called it Homeboy Bakery. Today, Homeboy Industries is the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world.
Fr. Boyle is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (A profoundly inspirational graduation gift!) and is the subject of the 2012 documentary, G-Dog.
Fr. Boyle says “What Martin Luther King says about church could well be said about your time here at Notre Dame: “It’s not the place you’ve come to, it’s the place you go from,” and you go from here to create a community of kinship such that God, in fact, might recognize it. You imagine with God a circle of compassion and then you imagine nobody standing outside that circle. You go from here to dismantle the barriers that exclude.
And there’s only one way to do that: and that is to go where the joy is, which is at the margins, for if you stand at the margins, that’s the only way they’ll get erased...when you stand with the poor, and the powerless and the voiceless…with those whose dignity has been denied, whose burdens are more than they can bear…you will go from here and have this exquisite privilege to stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop…with the disposable, so the day will come when we stop throwing people away….
He goes on to share the witness of a “gentle, kind soul,” 25-year-old José, a former gang member who in his short life had spent time homeless, in prison, and as a heroin addict and is now a valued member of the substance abuse team.
José said “I was six years old, and I guess you could say my mom and I, we didn’t get along so good. She said to me once, ‘I wish you would just kill yourself. You’re such a burden to me.’” I was nine when my mom took me to an orphanage and said, ‘I found this kid’’ and she left me there for 90 days until my grandmother could come rescue me from where she had dumped me.
My mom beat me every single day of my elementary school years with things you could imagine and a lot of things you couldn’t. Every day my back was bloodied and scarred. I had to wear three t-shirts to school each day: first t-shirt because the blood would seep through; second t-shirt you could still see it; finally the third t-shirt you couldn’t see any blood. Kids at school, they’d make fun of me, ‘Hey, fool, it’s 100 degrees, why you wearing three t-shirts?’”
And then he stopped speaking, so overwhelmed with emotion, and he seemed to be staring at a piece of his story that only he could see. When he could regain his speech, he said through his tears, “I wore three t-shirts well into my adult years because I was ashamed of my wounds. I didn’t want anybody to see them. But now I welcome my wounds. I run my fingers over my scars. My wounds are my friends. After all, how can I help heal the wounded if I don’t welcome my own wounds?”
May we all go from this place to create a community of kinship such that God might recognize it...
Fr. Greg “G-Dog” Boyle, S.J. recently addressed the graduates of Notre Dame. Part of his talk is quoted below, but his full 11-minute speech is well worth the listen at this link: http://news.nd.edu/news/rev-gregory-j-boyle-sj-2017-laetare-address/
After his ordination in 1984, Fr. Greg was assigned to serve the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles, located between two large public housing projects with the highest concentration of gang activity in the city. In response to witnessing the devastating impact of gang violence, he led the community to launch their first social enterprise business in an abandoned bakery and called it Homeboy Bakery. Today, Homeboy Industries is the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world.
Fr. Boyle is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (A profoundly inspirational graduation gift!) and is the subject of the 2012 documentary, G-Dog.
Fr. Boyle says “What Martin Luther King says about church could well be said about your time here at Notre Dame: “It’s not the place you’ve come to, it’s the place you go from,” and you go from here to create a community of kinship such that God, in fact, might recognize it. You imagine with God a circle of compassion and then you imagine nobody standing outside that circle. You go from here to dismantle the barriers that exclude.
And there’s only one way to do that: and that is to go where the joy is, which is at the margins, for if you stand at the margins, that’s the only way they’ll get erased...when you stand with the poor, and the powerless and the voiceless…with those whose dignity has been denied, whose burdens are more than they can bear…you will go from here and have this exquisite privilege to stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop…with the disposable, so the day will come when we stop throwing people away….
He goes on to share the witness of a “gentle, kind soul,” 25-year-old José, a former gang member who in his short life had spent time homeless, in prison, and as a heroin addict and is now a valued member of the substance abuse team.
José said “I was six years old, and I guess you could say my mom and I, we didn’t get along so good. She said to me once, ‘I wish you would just kill yourself. You’re such a burden to me.’” I was nine when my mom took me to an orphanage and said, ‘I found this kid’’ and she left me there for 90 days until my grandmother could come rescue me from where she had dumped me.
My mom beat me every single day of my elementary school years with things you could imagine and a lot of things you couldn’t. Every day my back was bloodied and scarred. I had to wear three t-shirts to school each day: first t-shirt because the blood would seep through; second t-shirt you could still see it; finally the third t-shirt you couldn’t see any blood. Kids at school, they’d make fun of me, ‘Hey, fool, it’s 100 degrees, why you wearing three t-shirts?’”
And then he stopped speaking, so overwhelmed with emotion, and he seemed to be staring at a piece of his story that only he could see. When he could regain his speech, he said through his tears, “I wore three t-shirts well into my adult years because I was ashamed of my wounds. I didn’t want anybody to see them. But now I welcome my wounds. I run my fingers over my scars. My wounds are my friends. After all, how can I help heal the wounded if I don’t welcome my own wounds?”
May we all go from this place to create a community of kinship such that God might recognize it...
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